Description of a personality syndrome in a common and invasive ground beetle (Coleoptera: Carabidae)

Abstract

Animal personality, defined as consistent differences among individuals in their behaviour, is being increasingly studied as it might lead to a new understanding of the evolution of behaviours. Despite a clear interest in studying personality in a wide range of taxa for comparative analyses, studies on invertebrates are still scarce. Here, we investigated the personality of a ground beetle, Nebria brevicollis, which is widespread in Europe and invasive in North America. We measured seven behavioural traits from an array of three different tests: (i) activity and exploration related traits; (ii) reaction to a threat, and (iii) phototaxis. The repeatability was tested by measuring all behaviours twice, on different days. All behavioural traits were consistent through time, highlighting the presence of personality in the beetle. In addition, we analysed the relationship between the different traits and highlighted two clusters of behaviours (behavioural syndrome), one grouping activity, exploration and boldness traits, and a second one consisting of responses to a threat. This study is the first to our knowledge to provide evidence for personality dimensions within the vast group of the Carabidae. It also constitutes a preliminary step in the experimental investigation of the importance of animal personality in invasive species.

What is an animal personality?

“…In a surprisingly large number of papers, however, no explanation or justification of the assumption that certain behaviours indicate boldness can be found (e.g., Bell and Sih 2007;Brodin 2009;Morales et al 2013; Supplementary Table 1). Some authors refer to the fact that the link between boldness and certain behaviours (and experimental set-ups) has already been successfully established by other empirical studies or is widely accepted in the field (e.g., Briffa et al 2008;Cote et al 2010;Frost et al 2007;Kaiser et al 2018;Labaude et al 2018;Rodríguez-Prieto et al 2011;Tüzün et al 2017). The novel object test, for example, is said to be a "standard paradigm used to assess boldness" (Frost et al 2007: 334).…”

“…Since the presence of an actual or potential threat often causes anxiety and stress, boldness is also linked to anxiety-related behaviour (Lewejohann et al 2011;Rödel and Meyer 2011) and to activity under stressful conditions (Kaiser et al 2018;Šlipogor et al 2016). Some empirical studies assume that boldness can also be expressed in exploratory behaviour (Briffa et al 2008;Kortet et al 1 Page 14 of 25 2012; Labaude et al 2018;Tan and Tan 2019). We think that this is only plausible if individuals are forced into a novel environment, where exploratory behaviour can overlap to a large extent with risk-taking behaviour.…”

A Review of the Phenotypic Traits Associated with Insect Dispersal Polymorphism, and Experimental Designs for Sorting out Resident and Disperser Phenotypes

“…Interesting findings could emerge from such investigations, and aliment the idea that dispersal and habitat establishment/colonisation could be a two steps process: individuals having a higher aggressiveness establish populations, then followed by joiners with more social personalities [189]. Some examples of the traits that can be considered and the associated experimental designs can be found in Labaude et al [190] and Tremmel and Müller [191]. A review of the studies on personality in invertebrates has been written by Kralj-Fiser and Schuett [192], and examples and theory can be found in Spiegel et al [193] and Dahirel at al.…”

Ants’ Personality and Its Dependence on Foraging Styles: Research Perspectives

“…However, only a few empirical studies have investigated multiple behavioral dimensions in insects so far. There are several examples of studying behavioral syndromes in Coleoptera, or beetles, the largest order of insects representing close to 40% of insect species and a fourth of all animal species (for a review, see Labaude et al, 2018). Beetles have complete metamorphosis, and some species possess various morphs, which provides different contexts for studying consistent behavioral variabilities.…”